Wine and Dine Volunteering - The Expo!

After discovering that you can volunteer at runDisney races last year, we've become hooked!  It involves all my favorite things - Disney, running, freebies and giving back! It's a Win-Win-Win-Win! (Wow, there's a lot of exclamation points in that paragraph...)

Anyway, we headed down Friday morning for our first shift. We would be working 12:00 - 7:30pm at the Expo.  After checking in upstairs and getting our credentials for later, we were told that we could grab a box of lunch before our shift began. Disney always decks out their Volunteer spaces nicely, and this time was no exception!

We've worked with many of these volunteers before

Of course, we had stopped at Subway before we got there (we didn't know there would be lunch - we were expecting snacks only), so we grabbed a box, so that we'd be able to eat it later on. 

It's a crappy photo, but you can see that they had a fridge for all the boxed meals, a rolling cooler that was filled with big and small bottles of Dasani, as well as a table set up with two Keurig machines, which both me and The Kiddo fell in love with - Disney was kind enough to put out hot chocolate k-cups for us non-coffee folks!

Keurig - the least frugal and least eco-friendly way to make coffee

I got a large bottle of water, as well as a cup of hot chocolate, mixed with one creamer (to cool it down and make it richer).

Yum! Hot Chocolate and Cold Water

 I got a Ham and Swiss Cheese boxed lunch. Other options were Italian, Turkey, and Vegetarian.

Boxed Lunch Presentation

 The first thing you see when you open the box is a bag of chips and a freshly baked cookie! Yum. Under that is the sandwich. 

Boxed Lunch Open Presentation

 Also in the box was some applesauce, a spoon for said applesauce, napkins and condiments. 

Can I get another cookie? Mine looks like applesauce

Once we finished our Subway, we hung around for a bit until our shift was called to the Expo floor. We followed our Team Leader, who assigned people to the Packet Pickup Booths.  The Kiddo was picked to work alone (well, away from us, but with other Volunteers), and Hubby and I worked the Kids Races Booths.

This is her "Geez, she's taking a photo of me" smile

At the kids booth, we gave out their bibs, a set of ears (if they ordered them beforehand), a cute Certificate that their parents could fill out later, a Wine and Dine Program (we didn't give out a lot of these; most of the parents already got it when they picked up their own bibs), and a tee with Santa Duffy on it.  I wish I took the photo of the shirts from the side of the table - all those teeny tiny baby-size shirts were freaking adorable!  I think the smallest size was a 12-month size?  Awwwww!

James' bib and ears

Cameron's Certificate of Completion

Official 2015 Wine and Dine Event Guide

Kid's Race Shirts - from 12 Months to Youth Large

It wasn't super-busy at our booth, so we did a lot of standing around.  There was a lot of open space by us, so we saw lots of kids just playing/spinning/jumping/whatever in the big open area.  

Or, you know, kids on leashes

I was able to snap a quick selfie of me and The Kiddo in the wild.

The Kiddo and Me

The Kiddo returned the favor by attempting to take an embarrassing photo of me dancing the music runDisney pumped in. She failed - not embarrassing at all!

Go White Girl, Go White Girl, Go!

At the end of our shift, we had to tally up how many bibs we'd given out that day, plus straighten up our area before we left.  We were able to grab another box lunch to take with us back to the hotel (they had a bunch of leftovers), so we didn't need to stop for dinner, which was a good thing, because I have a race tomorrow!  While other people are doing the Jingle Jungle 5k at Animal Kingdom, I'm going to be running around the Give Kids the World Village in Kissimmee!  Check out my next post for my race report.